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Monday, November 29, 2010

America Is An Embarrassment. It's Good for Us to Be Embarrassed.

I agree that the latest Wikileaks dump exposes American weakness, embarrasses us profoundly, and diminishes our standing in the world.

Good.

America is a force more for evil than good in the world, engaging constantly in criminal activities, facilitating ruinously exploitative global trade policies, blocking good treaties and accords on environmental issues and social justice questions.

America isn't an honest broker, America shouldn't be policeman of the world, Americans are far too backward and mis-informed to be trusted with serious planetary tasks.

Far better for the world, and eventually for us as well, to be embarrassed, marginalized, made to see sense, and possibly, just possibly, nudged to get our own house in order.

Americans need to take a good hard look at the third-rate dysfunctional crap shack we have become. We need to look at ourselves through the eyes of the rest of the world for a change. We need to start paying the real price for our stupid wasteful bullying practices.

This is a browning, secularizing, planetizing nation running head-long into economic and ecologic and technoscientific catastrophes of our own making, run by rich greedy parochial-minded dinosaurs. We're an embarrassment of recklessness, they're an embarrassment of greed and it's right and proper that we and they be embarrassed. Maybe standing exposed to the world in their debasement the precarious majority will find exposed as well the gumption to resist the scoundrels in force for a change.

I noticed on my way to work this morning that the New York Post(one of New York City's right-wing daily tabloids) has a big pictureof Julian Assange with the headline "WikiLeaks rape warrantInterpol hunts for Assange".

I agree with your assessment of the US (much of it, historically, always true) and appreciate its brevity.

One of the other things we've learned from the leaks so far is that many other countries are in the same position. Part of this 'revelation' is the internet itself. The spotlight has grown very large, and we are suddenly seeing that we haven't been nearly as "grownup" as we thought we were.

So yeah, that's a good thing. Only because, despite terrible leadership, I think most of us can agree on the direction we need to go.